Financial Transparency Coalition

December's installment of the Tax Justice Network's TaxCast has arrived. The podcast, produced by Naomi Fowler, covers all things related to corruption and tax. In the December 2014 Taxcast: how Mafia is corrupting democracy at the heart of Europe in Italy’s capital city of Rome. Also: the #LuxLeaks whistleblower is arrested and makes his first public statements on why he did it, the UK Chancellor’s new ‘Google Tax’, is the EU Commission President Jean Claude Juncker backing away from making a register of real owners of companies and trusts...

Developing countries are losing twice as much money as they earn because of issues like tax evasion, profits taken out by foreign investors and interest repayments on debt. A new report – The State of Development Finance for Developing Countries, 2014 – has found that for every dollar developing countries have earned since 2008, they have lost $2.07. Furthermore they have lost, on average, more than 10 per cent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) through these financial losses.

WASHINGTON D.C.—The Financial Transparency Coalition congratulates two members of its Coordinating Committee who were named to the International Tax Review’s “Global Tax 50”, a yearly list of the most influential people and organizations in the tax world. The Brussels-based European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad) and the UK’s Tax Justice Network were featured among other influential voices, like the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Pascal Saint-Amans of the OECD, and the International Monetary Fund.

BRUSSELS — In a deal reached last night, parliamentarians and campaigners have succeeded in making company ownership a fundamental topic. While EU nations have agreed to centralized registers of company ownership information, there is still work to be done to ensure full transparency and public access. “The amount of progress made over the last year and a half is encouraging, and the fact that all EU nations agreed to centralized registers is a significant step,” said Koen Roovers of the Financial Transparency Coalition. “But with countries like Denmark, France, the U.K. and Ukraine announcing commitments to public access, the European...